The Immortal Wound
by The Illegible
Summary: He was right after all. Despite herself and him and everything leading up to it, she does like Amaurot.


He was right after all.

Despite herself and him and everything leading up to it, she does like Amaurot. Beyond its beauty, its peace, its serenity on the cusp of annihilation… there is something bitterly kind woven into the bones of its people. Of its shades and its spires and every glass reflection it catches.

Maybe his magic is to blame. Even so, it aches to see this place and know all she sees will slip between her fingers if she holds too tightly. So many grains of sand that cannot keep their shape.

It aches to know this is something he realizes as well. He's called her to his monument of loss to lose herself, and for all his fury there is something touching in that too.

"Tread carefully," Y'shtola warns her, as they part ways to consult what shadows dwell here. "Bright as you are, the aether of this place may be enough to drown even you. Should something happen we may not learn soon enough to reach your side."

"I'll be alright," says the Warrior of Light (and it is of Light this day, overflowing as she is) "I'll be careful."

She does not know if this is a lie. Alisaie's reprimand to Ryne rings in her ears.

But, well. There are some choices yet that belong to her alone.

She will take care of this. Does it really matter how she accomplishes the task?

Across the silent, windless streets. Past citizens debating moot points in circles. The purple-flowered trees that offer no scent of their own.

Only a lingering brine.

She does, eventually, find the edges of this place. They fade into darkness like fog or forgetting. Realizing the boundaries of his spell hurts too. A reminder of artifice.

By the time she's realized this may not be the best location (at the border where dreams begin to unravel and Amaurot's residents do not think to peer beyond their limits) it's done already.

She whistles once more. High and long and keening and distinct from all past attempts.

This time, the shades look up. Study her for several long moments, as if struggling in their stunted nature to grasp her presence. Her significance.

Slowly, inevitably, they drift about their business.

The Warrior waits.

* * *

"You aren't going to change his mind, you know," says Ardbert, arms folded across his chest. He isn't looking at her but the space where fiction tumbles into nothing. Of course, nothing stirs.

"I know," she answers. This truth sits heavy behind her ribs. A dead bird in its cage.

"He doesn't love you." This statement catches her off-guard, and she meets his gaze. Blue eyes on gray. "Don't think I haven't noticed. I've been trying to find the right moment to tell you, but… well, now's as good a time as any." A ghostly frown. He drops his scrutiny to his feet. "Look around. He loves this place. _These _people. Maybe, at best, who you used to be. He could never love you as you are."

The Warrior of Light smiles. It hurts, but less than she expected.

An exhale.

"That's alright," she tells him, and it might even be half-true.

It's better that he doesn't love her. Any alternative feels too cruel under the circumstances.

"You can trust me," she says, and cannot tell whether what she feels is resolve or resignation. It is _certain_ either way.

"…You're sure, now?"

She shuts her eyes.

He has the blood of billions on his hands. Norvrandt. The Source. Seven worlds equally rich.

He'd be stained with her too in a heartbeat.

"If I didn't try, I would never forgive myself."

* * *

Eventually, Emet-Selch comes.

More than anything, he looks haunted. His form is near doubled-over, eyes glassy, visage pale. Enduring some unseen injury. Even so, the Ascian finds it in himself to snap as he approaches.

"You," he says, his mouth twisting in such a way that she can almost believe his anger, "are a fool. And you should know better than to keep playing games like this."

The Warrior opens her mouth to speak.

"No," says Emet-Selch. "No more jests. It was fun while it lasted, but time has run out. This is the end. You and I both knew what was coming. The occasion for stalling has passed."

"You answered," she says simply.

He stares at her for several moments. Something in his expression shifts. Hard, but not hostile.

"This will kill you," says Emet-Selch at last. His attention passes over her, skirts aside. "If not your body then the rest. That light will sunder your soul once more, as surely as anything could."

"Perhaps," she says, and again shuts her eyes. Searches herself.

Seeks him out and extends her hand.

"You came to me offering peace. Does that still stand?"

For some time, he remains perfectly still. Unblinking.

Then his lip curls, and his eyes narrow, and he says with more venom than she has heard yet, "Oh don't _look _at me so."

The Warrior flinches.

Still, she does not withdraw.

"Is this begging?" he asks. "Do you really think after all that's happened, everything I've told you, everything you've seen—"

He cuts himself off.

"What do you hope to gain in such invitations? My sympathy? My remorse?" The Ascian scoffs, irises like brass. "Please. Even by the standards of your kind this is idiocy."

Something settles inside her. She keeps her stance as he sharpens his gaze.

"Do you really have no love for yourself? No fear? What of your friends? What of the countless lives depending on _you?"_ He turns away. "If you were convinced to surrender after only a few words from me, your conviction must be truly pathetic."

This, Emet-Selch pronounces syllable by syllable. As if talking to someone particularly dull.

"I'm not giving up," says the Warrior of Light quietly.

He finds her again. Calculates. Recalculates. In pieces, some of the tension eases.

"G'raha is a good man," she tells him. Her tone doesn't waver. "Let him go."

At this, Emet-Selch laughs. It draws his head backward, exposes white teeth to what light manages to reach this place. There is a hollow ring to it, and every gesture he makes resembles a marionette twitched into motion. Too exaggerated for truth.

"Has it not occurred to you that I have slaughtered better men than him a thousand times over?"

A half-step toward her. One of his hands spasms shut.

"Your Exarch can transcend space and time. With his innovations, we can recover the Thirteenth Shard before its fall. We can prevent so many disasters from unfolding, from even being conceived. We can—"

"Why should you think," she asks softly, scarce more than a whisper, "that you'd stand a better chance of saving them now than you did then?"

It's as if he's been hit. She hears the breath leave him, sees his shoulders fall.

Strings cut.

What little color he had drains to nothing.

Thumb to temple. Index finger across forehead. He covers his eyes.

For several long moments after that, Emet-Selch does not move.

"I have to," he says. It's almost a snarl. "You know I have to."

The Warrior hesitates.

In his expression, she can see him tumbling backward into his own memories. His mistakes. His regrets.

The death of a world he blames himself for.

Then she says, no louder but perhaps kinder, "Come here."

He looks.

Whatever their misgivings, he does take her hand. When she pulls him close there is no resistance.

* * *

She wasn't sure what the difference between their aether would feel like.

Emet-Selch claimed exhaustion under the burning skies of Norvrandt. Its light floods her now—more than the vessel of a soul should rightly contain.

But an Ascian is tempered darkness, and that darkness comes born of unity. Of creation.

A steadying touch.

If it pains him, he does not say so.

* * *

She takes his hand again as he leads her through Amaurot.

No.

She takes his hand again as he leads her through his memory of Amaurot.

The Warrior does not smile. Emet-Selch does not sneer. He only pauses at the contact and looks back. A weary, unspoken question.

She squeezes gently.

They walk together.

* * *

Most of the trek is silent. When speaking risks shattering this fragile truce they've stolen, they take care to hold their tongues.

Only the dead speak here. Therefore, Ardbert lets his opinions be known directly.

"You shouldn't do this," he informs her. It isn't the first time he's said as much.

They enter one of the buildings. Like others of similar design it is gray, tiered, with opalescent cornerstones far above. The doors open for Emet-Selch without so much as a gesture on his part. The lobby beyond proves ornate, shaped through woven beams and gold-on-marble patterns. They remind her, abstractly, of ripples in water. No windows but a lift waiting across the entrance.

"I mean it," Ardbert goes on. "You're making a mistake. There's no middle ground here. He'll kill you or he'll watch you turn in front of him. You do know that, don't you?"

Another set of doors open. Only Ascian and elezen board.

The Warrior exhales slowly, deliberately, through her nose.

"Trust me," she says. Cautious. "I know what I'm doing."

Ardbert keeps his feet on the ground. They leave him behind.

Emet-Selch, for his part, glances her way. "Do you?" he asks as they ascend. A hint of his preferred wryness colors the question.

Her expression goes taut. Then she says, "It's true I lack your longevity. Even so… time and time again it has fallen on me to decide who lives or dies for a greater good. As if that was ever my place."

His jaw tenses, but he does not interrupt.

"Believe what you will," says the Warrior. "Only know I feel the weight of my world as you feel yours. For that reason, I cannot take your path with less gravity than my own."

They come to a stop. The doors open.

Emet-Selch sighs, and removes himself from her touch. Steps out into a short, narrow hall. Another door, like opaque glass, waits at the opposite end. Illuminated faintly from behind.

He approaches. She follows.

"Longevity," says the Ascian, "is not my only quality you lack."

They step inside.

* * *

On this floor, an entire side of the room consists of windows. She can see the skyscrapers, shimmering light-through-water, minuscule shades who wander below.

There is a desk, which appears less organized than she would have expected. The documents strewn across its surface have large sections crossed out, written in a script she can't recognize. Although it's impossible to be sure, there is an impression of mania—a jagged edge to Emet-Selch's letters—that suggest sloppy penmanship.

One of the shelves holds assorted trinkets, from rings to cups to models for machines. Many of these are broken and rusted. One may have been a minion once, but its body falls unresponsive. These are meticulously arranged.

A gray couch, all straight lines and clean edges. Empty archways, beyond which she glimpses a bedchamber. A kitchen. Warm brown floors and muted walls with golden lines spiderwebbing between.

Mounted on every side are masks, so many there is scarcely space between them. Empty, ranging from red to gray to black and white with patterns streaking across their surfaces. Some are shattered. Some are whole. Only darkness waits where eyes should be.

Emet-Selch stops at the center of the room, his back to her. It seems, briefly, as if this is so far as his immediate plans go.

"What I hope for," she says, scrutinized by a people long since fallen, "is to preserve more lives than I end. To protect those who can yet be saved."

"A pretty sentiment," replies Emet-Selch, unmoved. "But you would ask me to spare diseased beasts at the expense of _my_ civilization. By your broken nature, you are incapable of seeing how great the divide truly is."

"What makes a person diseased?" demands the Warrior at last. He doesn't so much as do her the dignity of turning. "Being mortal? Being fallible? Living with our limitations and finding happiness even there?"

She moves closer, puts a hand on his shoulder. Drags him to face her. At the back of her mind she sees Elidibus striking Minfilia down as she reached, sees Nabriales grinning as he dashed Moenbryda to the ground with one hand. When Emet-Selch yields to her touch, expression tired and perhaps even pitying, she knows in her heart any success she finds is only because he permits it.

Therefore, although the force remains in her voice… perhaps some of the anger abates. "What do you imagine happening should everything go right? Do you really think things will return to the way they were before?"

He shuts his eyes.

Once more, she hesitates.

What comes next is almost delicate.

"Life goes on and people change with it. You aren't the same person you once were any more than I am. Any more than a person could be." Again, there is no interruption. "Resurrect Amaurot to find them as they were or influenced by time, you can only meet disappointment."

"Do you truly believe I don't know that?" Emet-Selch asks simply, looking once more.

He removes himself without force or violence. The Warrior does not stop him.

"My time," he says, as a statement of fact empty of rancor, "should have ended long ago. I remain because there is a task I have yet to complete, a responsibility no one can perform in my stead." He pauses. "I will not entrust it to the others. But when this is over…"

Silence. His eyes are very bright.

"…my world will have need of neither heroes nor villains."

She understands then that he doesn't mean to survive so long as Amaurot does.

The resignation in his face, his voice, the weight of his shoulders, has built over ten thousand years. The only person with power to resist gave up long ago.

Hydaelyn's chosen kisses him then. Once on the cheek. Again on the mouth. His expression does not alter, and she takes care not to press him.

"It is possible," she murmurs, "to lose yourself in years." Her hand finds his jaw, holds him. Keeps his gaze until there is no doubt in his attention, his recognition. "It doesn't have to be like that," insists the Warrior of Light, nesting her fingers in his hair. "It might not even be possible for it to be like that."

He has no answer for her then.

"Why did you make this place?" She asks, scarcely more than a whisper.

Emet-Selch opens his mouth to speak. Stops. Glances down without pulling away.

At last, with a tremor that could almost suggest laughter, he says, "Everyone needs something. For me, well. Look around."

She rubs her thumb back and forth, brings her remaining hand to his shoulder.

When he next speaks, there is no mistaking the tension in his voice for humor.

"I see her in you. Echoes of who she was, how she spoke. What she believed in." A hard stop. He swallows, and she catches it in her palm. His arms stay at either side, and even were she not before him it seems likely the Ascian's head would remain bowed.

When his voice breaks, she finds herself unprepared.

_ "…You have always been so kind to me." _

It is all she can do to meet him, to silence his tongue with her own. Anything to prevent things from falling apart more than they have.

Stalling. Forever stalling for more time.

When he holds her back it is too tight, almost painfully so. Something that might slip away at any moment, sundered and scattered never to be whole again.

There is a sound that comes with every breath as he searches her hips, her shoulder-blades. Not words or language but the impression of his voice withheld. In that instant, she understands perfectly.

He already has her. Therefore she uses both hands to pull his face nearer still. Although she relinquishes his mouth, their noses brush and she can feel the heat rising under his skin.

"Tell me your name," she says, and they are close enough that surely he can feel the shape of her words in the air between them.

"Hades," he breathes, at last devoid of chiding and excuses. "My name is Hades."

* * *

His expression grows panicked when they collide with the desk. It's only an instant, just after the small of his back hits metal.

Even so.

A flare of urgency on her part. He must not flee now, hurling himself down a dark corridor. The Warrior finds his throat at the exposed skin above his collar and _moves_.

Her teeth graze the space, and when she sucks there is something gratifying in shattering the silence he so determinedly strives for.

Loud, strangled, not a moan so much as a cry. He fumbles to find an edge, to find anything he can hold onto. Braces himself. One of her hands has woven into the base of his skull, and between her lips she can feel the way his breath hitches, the way his heart races as she refuses to let him go.

_"Please,"_ Hades gasps. And the Warrior well knows when to press her advantage, so of course she does.

Harder now.

Enough that it will show.

Under the insufferably heavy robes he insists upon, past the moan she does pull from him eventually, he stiffens.

And she finds one of his hands pushed, firmly, into her shoulder.

He could have done any number of things. Shoved her. Thrown her.

He's asking.

She lets go, disentangling herself as she steps away.

The man before her is flushed, breathing ragged, scarcely balanced against collapse. Unfocused, he clings to awareness like one drugged.

"Hades," she says quietly, and he breathes a little deeper, features briefly exposing pain.

"If I…" he manages, hoarsely, and it hits that he doesn't even see her, doesn't see this place. "…won't last… you're not…"

This is someone who wants to go home so desperately that he's built a world from memory and imagination to live in. Scripted conversations, their paths rehearsed day after day. If the Ondo are to be believed, he did this generations before she was so much as a glimmer.

Plunged deep under a foreign sea, Emet-Selch is drowning.

When she approaches once more, tentative, he doesn't react.

"I _am_ here," she murmurs, fingers unfastening the clasp at his neck. "I'll be alright, and so will you… Please. Stay for now."

As she makes her way down his robes, peeling back layers of fur and silk, he leans his face into her shoulder. Neither helping nor hindering. And although she notices, the Warrior spares him the embarrassment of commentary as damp spreads across her skin.

* * *

He's lean under the epaulettes, and he knows this body in enough detail to include its history.

There is a mole on his right forearm, and a faint scar at one knee. The kind someone might get while climbing a tree as a child. She wonders if this is a legacy of his original host or one of his own past accomplishments.

When the cloak slides from his back, she follows its descent with one hand. This makes him shiver, but it doesn't make him look up.

Briefly, she wonders whether the Empress of Garlemald saw him thus. If any partners before her did.

The idea of him fucking with an empty expression on his face is enough to make her cold.

"You'll be alright," she whispers again, and although they both know this to be a lie it is something she wishes with all her heart.

* * *

She takes his hands in her own, kisses the joints of his fingers before placing them at the top buckle of her coat.

"If you would," she says, "pretend for a while that your worst conclusions no longer exist. We have a moment, and they won't serve it any good."

"What a stupidly mortal thing to say," Hades replies at last. If his words are a little unsteady, they do carry a hint of his usual ease.

Slowly, deliberately, he begins the task of removing her clothes in turn. His hands are shaking when the leathers part around her navel. He stares a moment, then presses a kiss to her collarbone. Lingers there.

"I miss you," he confesses. "I've always missed you. And there are questions I would ask that you can no longer answer…"

His thumbs hook the waist of her breeches, hold there. He looks to her face and seems to trace it. Searching.

"…I know your own history escapes," he says quietly. "This is your lifetime. It isn't supposed to be—"

She kisses him again.

After a moment he exhales. Relaxes.

They part.

"Forgive me," says Hades.

"I do," says the Warrior of Light, and there is grief in her smile but she means it. "Don't overthink this. Let it be something good."

He steps in, off the desk, and she is forced to move back to accommodate as he kneels. Presses his own kiss to her stomach as he drags her smallclothes down with the rest.

The nip is a surprise, and when she yelps the wolfish grin he gifts her is familiar.

"Not here," he says, as if it were only natural. "Come with me."

* * *

When he holds out his hand, she takes it.

* * *

"It seems empty."

The bed isn't made. The windows are frosted over. The walls are bare.

She knows not what she expected to find, but for every small way he betrays himself, Emet-Selch's room is remarkably barren.

He looks down. A faint, bitter smile crosses his face and is gone.

"Nothing escapes you."

He steps behind her. Presses lips to vertebra, arms folding across her chest.

Not hard yet, but she can feel him. It's more reassuring than she expected, something else to put him in kind with other men.

At least in this vessel.

"When I come here to sleep," he says, "remembering is counterproductive." Another kiss, trailing right. "As is scheming." Another. "As is impressing guests."

"Mm." She shifts against him experimentally, receives a surprised almost-laugh in response. "…how would you impress a guest, if you felt so inclined?"

He rests his chin on her shoulder. Eyes closed. "With myself, mostly."

_ Make believe things are fine. _

"…how would you have impressed me?"

He stills.

"With myself," he repeats, more softly, "but not in a way you could manage. Not as you are."

The Warrior considers. Tilts her head back.

"I'd like to see you," she says quietly. "As much as you can share."

At first, Emet-Selch neither moves nor replies.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks at last. "The Oracle's protection will fade ere long. You know what comes next."

He promised her madness. He promised her the end of a world.

It takes thought, to answer without lying.

"With our circumstances, we don't owe each other trust," she admits. "Or faith. Or kindness. I noticed when you offered them even so."

More deliberation.

She sighs.

"Woe unto me, I've been persuaded to care about you," she concedes. "Only declare that this has been a ruse from the start and I'll look terribly foolish."

"Tempting," he says, and then nothing. Nothing for so long that she can only assume he is weighing her words with precision.

"Everything I've told you," he echoes, "has been the truth."

* * *

She gets onto the bed before him, back to the mattress.

He lingers.

"For an Ascian," says Emet-Selch softly, "it is only to be expected that the limits of flesh impact us while inhabiting vessels. We are immune to neither pleasure nor pain… it only happens that our tolerance is somewhat higher than yours."

A pause.

Still, he waits at the edge. Not-looking.

"Our way is more intimate than physicality by itself. It is a… a meeting of aether between equals. Exploring each other's secrets. Making love to every choice, every memory, every insignificant piece of what makes you who you are."

His arms are folded over his chest, holding himself.

"You would become lost in me. I would be left wanting in you."

Stalling.

"Hades," says the Warrior of Light. "I'd like to see you."

And she smiles.

* * *

He straddles her, leans in close. The mark on his neck is flush and darkening. She presses her thumb over it, strokes the space. A grin twitches across his features, involuntary. Honest.

"My turn," he says hoarsely, and there is a flash of red as the glyph obscures him.

He finds the space at the corner of her jaw, the pulse beneath the surface. Teeth and heat and wet and the impression of something not-quite solid. Hooks and horns and wings pressed flat into light, the glow humming at the heart of the abyss.

Beneath, a mortal mask she knows. Beneath that, the mask of his kind. A pair of pale, twin arches. Sound waves or rain on calm water expanding in rings.

He reaches for her with his tongue and his aether and his hand tangled in her hair, she feels something slide behind her ribs beating beating the black stain of him like a drop of ink against the sun. Briefly he almost shrinks back, scraping as he bites as she shouts stripped of language one of her legs meets his back searching for something to hold onto in vain.

Hades pushes further, cold and solid and alive, and she feels him shudder as she lets strands of her self (too much light, an entire world's worth of light) wind around this anchor examine—

_wide-eyed prayer against the bodies of children parents brothers sisters friends teachers lovers strangers Amaurot Amaurot bleeding over marble the howl of beasts the secret cruelty of men is anybody listening is anybody there we offer anything I offer everything take it please my god my Father save something please save us _

a hitch, he moves lower finds the space between her breasts knees sliding backward she grips his waist between her thighs

_on the field of war she prepares he begs her would die to keep her from this she does not care completes her ritual with those who remain who would throw their lives away what is left proves empty endless it matters not how desperately he calls her name _

"Wait," he breathes, she tightens her hold he inhales sharply arms buckle

_I love you he told her I love you the silver winding hair her blood of creation against eternity it was he who lit the lamps it was he who gave the stars it was he who gifted small machines to make her smile even as she offered birds fish serpents lions vines twining around his wrists holding him fast _

stomach, he is almost reverent mouths something she can't hear (this is her womb, her particular vessel of creation) nails catch his back drag reminders into his skin

here I am

_early battles saw man spilling himself across the dirt pink sinew yellow fat they wore pieces of each other as trophies like jewelry sick and shaking he sees fault my fault things he never imagined his people were capable of end of the world until the end of time _

darkness coiling pooling inside her with his tongue between her legs hot and slick and searching feverishly

_he tells his wife who is sweet and gentle and so fragile she says nothing for hours afterward in bed she stabs him to death demon butcher liar traitor too shocked to fight back he lets go _

she streams to meet him finds his hair and pulls red behind the symbol that marks him Ascian breathing hard expression slack she wonders what he sees twines her aether deeper threading the core of him like roots he chokes she twists them as one

_Elidibus found him unresponsive in-between and he didn't want to be awake anymore Elidibus gripped him hard enough to hurt it's not real he said it has never been real stop placing yourself beside them when all they offer is pain please _

_please let me sleep _

she has him under her finds where the blade entered ages past and kisses him there, finds another spot to follow scars he neglected to include wonders how many more she hasn't seen

_countless small betrayals petty hatreds it doesn't take true ugliness to inspire it a word misplaced a liberty taken he wants to go home he wants more than anything to go home _

"Please," he whispers, she latches to his mouth tastes herself she wants him to coat her the same way she is too bright to be swallowed as he fears

_the streets of Amaurot at night hand in hand her head on his shoulder she maps his constellations warm and delicate he had no grasp then that such happiness could end each time he remembers it rips the wound open once again_

* * *

At the core of him something hungers, something keens, something collapsed entirely past reason. She finds Hades mutilated by time, flooded with darkness nearly feral in need of a world long gone—

she knows.

The light encircles him and he flinches, she cannot make herself less than she is now but nonetheless she is _here_.

Like a pupil contracted, like a black hole, he has concentrated his being into something impossibly small and dense.

She cannot smooth the edges of him, cannot undo the damage of eons.

Perhaps once, when he was newly tempered, he would have refused any contact with her light. His hatred of Hydaelyn, still a powerful thing now, would have won over all else.

But he is so lonely.

When she touches him, he can't help but respond. Can't help but move into the first contact he's had in ages. It matters not that she's incomplete, hers is the soul he's longed for.

Slowly, his grip on himself begins to come loose.

* * *

"Stop" he says, voice rough and frantic as he reaches for the side of the bed.

She stops.

"Hades?"

He wants to pull away, isn't aware enough or coordinated enough for a portal. Let alone while their aether remains thus enmeshed.

She gets off. The Ascian manages to roll over, to prop himself on hands and knees. Slides his legs over the side.

"What is it?" asks the Warrior of Light, and this is too much. He stops, puts his face in one hand.

It's all so quiet. She can see his throat working as if he's trying to speak, but nothing comes.

Tentative, she rests her palm along his spine.

"I know it isn't real," he says at last, the words quick and clipped and no less agonized for that. "None of it. Not you. Not this place. Not what I…"

She encircles him from behind, rests her head on his shoulder-blade.

"I've drawn this from my own mind because the… the shell of Amaurot. Its broken buildings. Its people… naught remained. I know what you are, and she's…"

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh…" says the Warrior.

Silence. Beneath her ear, she can hear faintly the aborted efforts of his voice, his lungs.

"They're gone," he manages eventually. "More sacrifice."

She folds her arms up over his chest.

"I'm with you now," she tells him softly. "I'm real."

A terrible sound, like a sob. Something constricts.

"Hades," she says again, "Hades, listen to me. You're not alone." Lips to skin, warm and insistent. "I beg of you… allow yourself this respite. Time is short."

"A fantasy," he says, his voice high and stilted. "A p-pretty fantasy and nothing more."

"Even so," says the Warrior.

She hesitates.

"The reality of our situation will come whatever we will," she tells him. "So have mercy. Make something better to recall."

He stills beneath her.

The name he says belongs to a stranger, but it is no less hers for that.

"I… I don't know what will become of it all, should I…"

The Warrior of Light sighs. Shuts her eyes.

Holds him closer just the same.

"I'm so sorry," she says in almost a whisper. "I wish it wasn't like this, but it is."

She presses her mouth firm, struggling with the words she knows must come next.

"Pretend with me," she tells him. "I promise I'll… I won't let anything bad happen. I swear it."

In her arms, in increments, he allows himself to breathe.

She waits.

He could interrogate her. He could denounce her. He could belittle her fragmented strength and the absurdity of her offer.

"Alright," he says instead, so quietly that she wonders whether it is for himself. "The pretty fantasy it is, then."

* * *

When at last she begins to get up, he only watches her. Not listless but resigned. Any curiosity he shows is passive.

When she kneels before him, her hands on his knees, he stops her.

"You're aren't planning to…?"

She meets his eyes, finds herself bewildered at catching him bewildered.

A moment passes.

"It only seems fair…" she tells him, less certain under questioning.

Another moment.

"I'm… you seem like you could use it," she elaborates. "I wasn't going to make you move, so I thought—"

He smiles, exhaling what might have been a laugh.

Rests his hand on her head.

"I'll have you know," says Hades, and it is such a relief to hear him speak easily again, "that sundered as you are, I am still very fond of you."

He leans in. Presses a kiss to her brow.

It is perhaps one of his warmest gestures toward her—not born of memory or need or circumstance. Unbidden, she finds herself smiling back. Blinking away the sting of her own vision.

"That way," he says quietly, "doesn't offer me anything particularly novel. I'll be best pleased by having you by my side."

* * *

She wants him to remember in the echo of her touch, in every place her aether takes root and blooms within him.

_When the world was whole he marveled at the land around him, wove structures into stone and steel like living things. She learns his cleverness and mischief made her laugh even then. When first she stole his breath with a kiss, it stunned him silent. And she smiled, and she wished him good night, and she proved undaunted in every way that he was not._

She explains how she loves him, still and always, in the way her lips linger at his shin. The scar on his knee. The bony angle of his hip and the flow of blood to his groin. Lower abdomen, upper abdomen, the vulnerable flesh that is his mortal body. Further to where vitals work to sustain the soul which overwhelms them.

_When he invited her to his home for drinks and collaboration, they found themselves dancing in each other's arms. Inebriated, clumsy, undignified—giggling like children at their own missteps. Beyond his window the moon was full, and Amaurot gleamed, and this time he kissed her instead. _

He pulls her back into bed with him. She meets each eyelid, the tip of his nose, his mouth. She does not relinquish her hold even as he turns her, positions himself above. The Warrior clasps Hades' face with both hands, guides her aether to the most withered parts of him she can find and overflows. In return he seeks her like a lifeline, graceless and grasping at the fractured corners of her soul. She bites his bottom lip on a whim, earns a moan as her reward. Then this gap between them seals once more.

_They memorized the city together, not in a matter of years but centuries. Every face, every voice, every street, every hall. Each of their number constantly testing boundaries of what was possible, what could be imagined. Each of them sparking off their fellows. They shared the casual intimacy of the familiar, celebrated one's epiphany as if it were their own. An unfathomable connection today._

Her voice catches as he enters, smooth and firm and practiced. His body accustomed to gestures aether has forgotten. Like surface tension breaking, as Hades plunges deep she comes to meet him. Acts as guide to corners he can exploit, hot and throbbing across nerves to fingertips. The Warrior shouts as darkness lances through, curls her toes. Arches and tries to pull him further past any capacity for escape.

_He is marked through his habits. The way hair forms odd angles upon waking. The way he hums to fill silence. His care in turning pages and his precision at drafting tables. Emet-Selch used to surprise her occasionally in remade dishes that took his fancy. By following lightning overhead with his eyes. She feels, pressing into these details, everything he's surrendered since then. The warmth of watching him stir replaced by despair. With nothing waiting for him, day after day he throws himself back into dreams. _

Wet, encircling with arms and legs and cunt, she whispers "you're mine" into a mouth swollen from ministrations. And as she draws herself tighter, putting pressure against his cock, he cries out and his hips spasm and she refuses him relief. Pushes closer still, grinding from below to snag his voice. Eyes wide. Catching every tremor in his lips and every blind, wordless answer. Barely a grunt repeated louder as she insists as she permits no rest as she traps him in the brilliant force of her _you will never be rid of me now._

And at last, something snaps and he jerks hard enough to bruise glyph flaring and going out and there isn't enough left of him to say her name when he comes. Sticky-hot and seeking, captive to her and his vessel pouring out.

Eventually his body ceases to rock of its own accord, not at once but in pieces. Sightless, trying to form words, slowly softening inside her.

The Warrior starts to relax, and there is a single, violent shudder as Hades sinks. Still unseeing, still unspeaking despite his efforts. Limp.

* * *

Extricating herself she turns him onto his back, leans over his chest and with one hand gently pushes the hair from his eyes.

"Stay with me…" he manages at last, barely audible at all. "…I can't…"

_This will kill you. If not your body then the rest. That light will sunder your soul once more, as surely as anything could. _

She closes her eyes as her own sight blurs as tears inevitably escape to roll down her cheeks. The Warrior of Light kisses Emet-Selch once, tenderly, and only replies "I will."

* * *

Their aether remains locked even after their bodies have separated. Although he tries to withdraw, the effort proves feeble.

She holds fast.

Eventually, he stops trying.

Hades has lost both will and energy to resist her light.

* * *

He struggles to shift position, moves sluggishly. When Hydaelyn's chosen realizes he wants to hold her, she assists him.

His arms rest around her waist, one ear flat against her thigh. Eyes glazed, she wonders if he's even noticed her aid.

She strokes his head, his back. Listens as the uneven breathing slowly begins to calm.

He's warmer now, moist with sweat and interrupted by her touch. Bright against the pallor of his skin, she examines where she met him with nails. With teeth. It's more worrying than she thought it would be.

Hurting him now would be frighteningly easy.

"…asked me…"

The Warrior stills. Checks his face. Finds him fading, lids half-shut already.

"Hades?" she says quietly. Her fingers prickle against his undercut.

Nothing.

Nothing for several moments.

Then he seems to collect himself, if only just. Finds her through a haze.

"…you asked me, before," he says. "What I… what I know of you."

Strands of hair slide across his nose again. Smiling faintly, she tucks them behind the exposed ear. "I did," she replies simply. "I liked your answer."

Tension as he tries to shake his head without lifting it.

Emet-Selch quirks his lips. "Charity," he admonishes. "I didn't… not a proper…"

She bends, plants a kiss against his scalp. "You owe yourself more credit."

A laugh. Faint, affectionate this time. "…tried to perfume a chocobo. Bloody fool."

Her mouth parts, aghast.

"Don't tell me that's what you…"

He smiles a little wider. Shuts his eyes entirely. "Bending over backwards, always… always making time. You've always offered a… offered kindness. Your word. Your _heart._"

His smile fades.

"…moments lost, and those around you didn't… couldn't see it. Asked too much."

He nuzzles her leg gently. Kisses her there.

"…kind of you… always your mistake."

A soft exhale, through her nose. She brushes her thumb across his brow.

"I love you," she murmurs, and it is such a simple thing to say. A truth like the swell of the moon, the curl of a wave. "I'm glad you came back. That you're here to see."

The tremor of a breath taken. He whispers her name.

_Her_ name, and hers alone.

* * *

"I thought I'd seen you for the last time."

She listens to the sound of his voice. Of his heartbeat.

"I'm with you now," she tells him, tears spilling hot and unrestrained and silent. "I'll be with you until the end. I promise."

Her answer satisfies him.

"And I do love you," he breathes. "Always have."

* * *

This is how he falls asleep in her arms.

At peace as she has ever seen him.

* * *

_Thy Life is a riddle, to bear rapture and sorrow_

* * *

"It's alright," she whispers to the air. "I promise you."

* * *

Eventually, as she understood from the beginning, time runs out.

"Are you ready?" asks Ardbert softly from the entrance.

The Warrior looks down at herself. Looks at the silent and exhausted form of Hades.

"Yes," she tells him quietly. "But be wary if you embarrass easy."

Ardbert does not laugh, and the smile that crosses his face is joyless.

"Funny," he says as he enters, "somehow it just doesn't seem important anymore."

He doesn't meet her eyes. Entirely avoids Emet-Selch.

"I think," says Ardbert carefully, "that I know what you mean to do."

The Warrior can't bring herself to reply. Runs her fingers across the back of her lover's neck.

He doesn't stir.

"Maybe it really is the best way," says Ardbert.

_Don't make a decision that leaves you alone. _

She shuts her eyes.

Their voice.

Their heartbeat.

"I'll be with you," Ardbert tells her. "I knew almost as soon as we came to this place. With me, we can be…"

Quick.

Clean.

Merciful.

* * *

As one.

* * *

She prays to Hydaelyn in silence.

_I remember the evil you placed at the feet of Lahabrea. _

_I remember what you called them. _

_These… these are the dark minions of which you spoke. _

She hesitates. Hears the even breathing of a man in her lap.

_They're only people,_ she thinks. _They have only ever been people. And though they must needs be stopped, what they've been forced to endure is unforgivable._

_What he has been forced to endure. _

_Do not forget you bear responsibility in this, Mother. _

_As do I. _

Her vision burns, blurs.

_Have compassion now. For him and me both. _

_He is more than Emet-Selch. _

_Hades tried. For eons, he bore the weight of a world that was never coming back. A world he couldn't save. There were innumerable betrayals and disappointments and doubts. _

_More loss than could be borne by a single life. _

_He had no choice. Zodiark claimed him upon staying the death of a world. _

_As he had to. _

_As I have to. _

_Hydaelyn. _

_Let his dreams be sweet for what remains of his life. Let this be an end to pain. Relieve his burden. _

_Set him free._

* * *

_To listen, to suffer, to entrust unto tomorrow_

* * *

A blade of light.

An entire world of light.

_"I promise you." _

In bliss rather than despair.

Thus does the Warrior of Light slay Emet-Selch in his sleep.

* * *

_In one fleeting moment, from the Land doth life flow_

* * *

He does not wake.

Despite the blow's force, when what crystalized aether remains of him dissolves it is gentle.

* * *

Again, for the last time, a terrible wail resounds with the death of Amaurot.

* * *

G'raha is with them.

"We have to hurry," he says, leaning against Thancred for support. Striding past the indifferent shades, striding to where her aether flared like a beacon. "It may already be too late."

Yet there she is, waiting outside. Disheveled and red-eyed and wholly herself.

"Emet-Selch is no more," she tells them simply, and does not smile as she says so.

As one, they hesitate.

As one, they wonder.

"…how do you fare?" Alisaie asks. It is a strange care with which she chooses her words.

None of them have seen the Warrior in such a state before.

This time she does smile. With it comes the weight of her grief. She pats the younger elezen on the head lightly as she passes.

"It's alright," she tells her. "I promise."

* * *

_Yet in one fleeting moment, for anew it doth grow _

_In the same fleeting moment thou must live, die and know _


End file.
